Just looking at the CD sleeve to composer/saxophonist John Zorn's 1989 classic, Naked City, is enough to rope you in for a listen. The front displays a real-life, black-and-white photo of a man lying face down in a puddle of blood, a silver revolver resting a few feet from his head. The message is clear: "herein lies the mafia-style execution of jazz as you know it."

Take King Crimson, The Bad Plus and Mr. Bungle, tie them all together and set them on fire, and you'll wind up with something like John Zorn. Unable to pin down any consistent tonal theme that recurs from track to track, you'll instead hear 26 different shades of madness. Even within the tracks, the song structures are hacked up and slopped together like processed meat. The faint of heart may find the music too stressful to endure, but for intrepid, mad-toothed jazz liberals, each tune will be gobbled up like an exquisite morsel of inanity.

Zorn, who was born in New York in 1953, has authored dozens upon dozens of albums since the late 1970s. In 1995, having exercised a broad influence on the galaxies of jazz, rock, punk and symphony music, he started his own record label, Tzadic. He's still active, exploring different genres at a frantic pace, and his more recent music will be performed by a string quartet at the Gardner Museum in Boston on Jan. 29 and 30. But Naked City, with its abrasive, death-metal jazz assaults, stands as one of his most explosive achievements to date.

The album is introduced on the first track, "Batman," by a zany, loopy guitar riff from the great Bill Frisell, who complements Zorn's raucous style throughout the CD. Zorn then enters with an alto shriek that sounds like something out of Psycho, a fitting introduction for the mad saxophonist. From this point on, it's a chaotic amalgam of noise that sneaks metal and Motown cutups into a wild, free jazz hootenanny. Frisell sounds like Chuck Berry on mescaline, and Zorn sounds like... well, he sounds like Zorn.

Naked City offers fleeting glimpses of so many different styles that it would take a full textbook to address them all. The second track, "The Sicilian Clan," briefly slows things down, beginning with a sedate, cryptic xylophone sequence that is echoed by a lambent plucking action from Frisell. This is probably the most "listenable" tune on the CD, with Zorn proving that he is in fact capable of playing calm, eloquent saxophone. Enjoy it while it lasts, because most of the alto work that follows is diced up by screeching high notes and deliberately twisted digressions.

As the album progresses, John Zorn flatly refuses to give your ears a break. Time and again the band establishes a coherent melody with a tangible rhythm and beat, but just when you think you can safely begin tapping your foot, they suddenly tear it to pieces and leave it bloodied on the sidewalk, just like the poor bloke on the CD cover.

What makes Naked City so unique is this back and forth between familiar modes and anarchic noise. You literally never have a clue what you're going to hear next. One minute you're listening to an agonized cover of Ornette Coleman's "Lonely Woman," and the next you are hearing a lighthearted and waggish rendition of "The James Bond Theme." Other song titles include "You will be shot," "Igneous Ejaculation," "Blood Duster" and, my favorite, "Fuck the Facts" (the sweetest 16 seconds of sound yet to be recorded on compact disc.)

The rest of Zorn's band consists of Wayne Horvitz on keyboards, Fred Frith on bass and Joey Baron on drums. Though you would be hard-pressed to decipher any actual lyrics on the CD, it is dappled with Tazmanian Devil type vocals from special guest Yamatsuka Eye.

What is the relevance of this album in the dawn of 2005? To me it demonstrates the innumerable directions that jazz, and music generally, can still take. Decades after the free jazz and fusion revolutions, John Zorn still found a way to do something totally original with his music. Though Naked City was released 16 years ago, those who hear it for the first time in 2005 are sure to confess that they've never heard anything quite like it. Hence the flabbergasting genius of Zorn. His greatest accomplishment is showing us that musical possibilities are limited only by the celestial boundaries of the imagination. And with the right kind of mind, you can come up with some crazy shit.

For those intrigued by the Zorn sound, head to the Gardner Museum in Boston on Saturday and Sunday, Jan. 29 and 30, at 1 p.m. Though the music will be played by a string quartet, John Zorn will be present.